Whenever I want to snap the neck of one of the incompetent glaziers, I pull out my phone and check the camera in her studio. It gives me a sense of peace watching her dab away at the canvas, her music blasting, her spare paintbrushes twisted up in her hair.
She’s much too engrossed in her work to think about me.
Once, she seemed to sense that I was watching. She turned and faced the camera, grinning and giving me a saucy wave. Then she pulled up her shirt, flashing her tits at me, before turning back to her work.
She could only have been guessing, but my cock still raged against my clothing, demanding that I abandon this idiotic project and speed back to the studio so I could bury myself inside of her.
When Mara’s working, I might as well not exist.
She’s completely absorbed by the project, forgetting to eat or drink or sleep.
It makes me insane with jealousy. I hate when anything pulls her attention away from me.
That’s not how my mind works.
I can think about many things at once, and one of those things is always Mara.
Like a computer that can run several programs simultaneously, I keep tabs on Shaw and Officer Hawks, supervise the construction of the sculpture, and think of every possible way that I can wrap another rope around my sweet little Mara and pull it tight.
When I can abandon the sculpture at the end of the workday, I head over to the studio to pull Mara’s attention back where it belongs: onto me.
I used to hate the holidays. They seemed pathetic and manufactured, designed to give some semblance of structure to the year. So people could pretend to celebrate, when really they’d rather not see their family at all and would only use the excuse to drink as much as possible before passing out in front of the tree.
I’m learning how different the world appears when everything you do is for someone else.
Now, instead of Christmas trees and decorations striking me as tacky, I want to find the most beautiful ones possible, so I can surprise Mara when she walks through the door and finds the house bedecked in soft, silvery lights. I want to see them reflected on her skin and hair, echoing the smoky color of her eyes.
It’s easy to reduce Mara to childlike wonder. To give her what she never had before.
I pile the presents under the tree, dozens of them, all with her name on the tags. She doesn’t care what’s inside—the fact that she has gifts waiting for her reduces her to tears, and she has to go and hide in a distant corner of the house, headphones on, wrapped in a blanket, until she’s ready to come look at them again.
Every stupid thing that people do, that I used to watch them do, now I’m in the center of it.
I take her skating on the holiday ice rink at Embarcadero Center. In this strange wintery weather, San Franciscans are giddy with the joy of actually donning scarves and pom-pom hats, zipping around under the frost-blighted palm trees, drinking their hot cocoa.
The city is loaded with twice as many twinkling lights, as if trying to drive away the freezing fog that blows in off the bay, each day colder than the one before.
The other skaters float in and out of view like ghostly wraiths.
Mara is an angel in the softly glowing light.
I bought her a snow-white parka with fur all around the face. She wears a pair of fluffy mittens and a brand-new pair of skates, freshly sharpened to a razor’s edge. Only the best for Mara, no shitty rentals.
I never knew how good generosity could feel. My ability to make her life comfortable and magical gives me a sense of god-like power. Not a wrathful god anymore, but one overflowing with goodness and light.
I don’t know if I have any real kindness inside of me.
But Mara believes that I do. She believed I wouldn’t hurt her, when I had every intention of killing her. Now she believes that I have the capacity to love.
What is loving someone?
From all outward appearances, I’m very much a man in love. I shower her with gifts, praise, attention.
But I’m all-too-aware that everything I do for Mara benefits me. I feed off her joy like a vampire. The hot cocoa tastes sweeter when I lick it off her lips. The lights are more beautiful reflected in her eyes. The air in my lungs is fresh and sweet when we fly across the ice together, hand in hand.
For now, all our interests align. What’s good for Mara is good for me.
It requires no real sacrifice. I’m only doing what I want.
But perhaps, I am changing in the smallest of ways.
Because for the first time, I wonder if she deserves more than this.
Mara thinks she sees who I am and loves me anyway.
Only I know how cold I truly am at heart.
I told myself I was always honest with her. While letting her believe what she wants to believe: that I always had good reason … that I might be justified.
It’s time to tell her the truth. To show her, the only way I know how.
I take Mara down to the lowest level of the house. To the locked door she’s never seen beyond.
I see her mounting dread as we descend the stairs. Mara is a curious kitten … but she has an instinctive understanding of potential danger. She skirts away without ever acknowledging the boundary.
Now I fit the key in the lock. And I throw open the door.
Mara flinches, as if expecting a slap.
Instead, her eyes widen with wonder. She steps inside the cavernous space.
“What on earth …” she breathes, her bare feet sinking into a thick carpet of moss.
How Villains Are Made – Madalen Duke
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The air is rich with oxygen, the cave-like space stuffed with greenery. Ferns cling to the dripping rocks. It’s an underground garden, a riot of life and color, locked away in the heart of the earth.
“It was my mother’s,” I tell her. “She was trying to create a true terrarium—self-sustaining, self-perpetuating. It runs with very little maintenance.”
Mara is speechless, stepping into the surprisingly vast space. She had no idea what was hidden away under the house. No one knows but me.
“My god,” she whispers. “It’s so beautiful …”
“She spent all her time down here. Especially at the end.”
Mara turns slowly, a shadow falling over her eyes.
She understands that I brought her down here for a reason. Not just to show her the garden.
“This is where I found her,” I tell Mara. “Hanging from that tree.”
I nod my head toward a holly tree, its gnarled bough tough enough to bear my mother’s weight when she kicked the stool out from under her feet. I ran to her and clung to her cold feet. Not even close to strong enough to lift her down.
Mara’s eyes are already welling with tears, but I need to explain this to her, before she gets the wrong idea again. Before she builds the narrative she wants to believe.
“I was four years old,” I tell her. “She already knew something was wrong with me. She’d been fooled by my father when they met, but since then she had learned to know him. To see the blankness on his face. His casual cruelty. His lack of normal human warmth. And of course, in his brother Ruben, she saw the fullest iteration of what we are. The family curse.”
I give a hollow laugh.
Mara shakes her head, wanting to object, but I speak too quickly, determined to tell her everything before she can interrupt.